Willem Einthoven
Dutch physiologist
Who was Willem Einthoven?
Willem Einthoven (21 May 1860 – 29 September 1927) was a Dutch medical doctor and physiologist. Willem Einthoven was born in Semarang on Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), the son of Louise Marie Mathilde Caroline de Vogel and Jacob Einthoven. His father, a doctor, died when Willem was a child. His mother returned to the Netherlands with her children in 1870 and settled in Utrecht. His father was of Jewish and Dutch descent, and his mother's ancestry was Dutch and Swiss. In 1885, Einthoven received a medical degree from the University of Utrecht. He became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1886. He married his first cousin Frédérique Jeanne Louise de Vogel (7 September 1861 – 31 January 1937) and supported her brother Willem through school at Leiden. In 1902, he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Historical significance
He invented the first practical electrocardiograph (ECG or EKG) in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it ("for the discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram"). He invented the first practical electrocardiograph in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it.